Quotes of the day

posted at 10:41 pm on December 3, 2013 by Allahpundit

Yesterday, I reported on the troubles I had accessing the new-and-improved HealthCare.gov. The Obama administration today said more than 1 million people accessed the site yesterday and that it was stable for users.

The president likewise touted the site’s performance today, part of a push to promote the law.

So I decided to try the site again this afternoon. This time, I didn’t see the “Please Wait” flags that bogged me down yesterday, but I had a more fundamental problem. When I got to the step of comparing health plans, I couldn’t see any.

***

In what could become the next major headache for President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy, a group representing leading U.S. insurers said on Tuesday that technology fixes that will enable millions of people to sign on to HealthCare.gov have not fully addressed faulty data that the site has been sending these companies about their new enrollees…

“It’s a real problem for plans when the enrollment file never comes over, and then you get the consumer calling, and the plan has no record of that individual,” Durham said at a forum organized by Georgetown University and law firm Arent Fox. “Time is short. January 1 is coming around fairly quickly here.”

States are concerned that many of the flat files they’ve received from HealthCare.gov don’t indicate whether applicants have also attempted to enroll in Medicaid directly through a local agency, leaving states vulnerable to duplicate sign-ups. And there’s been no end-to-end testing to gauge potential issues with the information states get. Complicating the issue further is the work many states are doing to rebuild their own Medicaid eligibility systems to align with new Obamacare requirements.

***

The administration has given up on success, as it might once have defined it. The object is no longer 7 million people signed up through the exchanges, with 2.7 million of them young and healthy, and the health-care cost curve bending back toward the earth. It is to keep the program alive until 2015. The administration’s priorities are, first, to keep Democrats from undoing the individual mandate or otherwise crippling the law; second, to keep insurers from raising premiums or exiting the marketplace; third, to tamp down loose talk about the failures on the exchanges; and, only fourth, to get to the place where it used to think it would be this year, with lots of people signed up for affordable insurance. It is now measuring the program’s success not by whether it meets its goals, but by whether it survives at all. And all of its choices are oriented toward this new priority.

You can see this in the decisions the administration made about fixing HealthCare.gov: It focused on the part that voters can see, even though the part that accurately transmits data to insurers is arguably more important — is it better, or actually worse, to “sign up” a bunch of people when you can’t get that information to the insurers who need to write the actual policies? You can see it in the strategic delays, particularly the delay of the open enrollment deadline until after the 2014 elections. And you can see it in how the administration is treating insurers. As plan cancellations became a big political problem, the administration looked like it was preparing to blame insurers, which has been a very successful political tactic for them in the past. But it quickly walked that back, because with the program’s survival on the line, it needed insurers on board. That’s why the administration is looking to get extra money to the insurers; it’s the sweetener it needs to forbear little things such as possibly not getting accurate enrollment data, or payments, for months.

From the administration’s perspective, this makes a lot of sense. A program that survives until 2015 can hopefully be fixed. A program that is fatally damaged by Democratic or insurer defections definitely can’t.

***

It’s a shock for most people that it’s a shambles. A fellow very friendly to the administration, a longtime supporter, cornered me at a holiday party recently to ask, with true perplexity: “How could any president put his entire reputation on the line with a program and not be on the phone every day pushing people and making sure it will work? Do you know of any president who wouldn’t do that?” I couldn’t think of one, and it’s the same question I’d been asking myself. The questioner had been the manager of a great institution, a high stakes 24/7 operation with a lot of moving parts. He knew Murphy’s law—if it can go wrong, it will. Managers—presidents—have to obsess, have to put the fear of God, as Mr. Obama says, into those below them in the line of authority. They don’t have to get down in the weeds every day but they have to know there are weeds, and that things get caught in them…

For four years I have been told, by those who’ve worked in the administration and those who’ve visited it as volunteers or contractors, that the Obama White House isn’t organized. It’s just full of chatter. Meetings don’t begin on time, there’s no agenda, the list of those invited seems to expand and contract at somebody’s whim. There is a tendency to speak of how a problem will look and how its appearance should be handled, as opposed to what the problem is and should be done about it. People speak airily, without point. They scroll down, see a call that has to be returned, pop out and then in again.

It does not sound like a professional operation. And this is both typical of White Houses and yet on some level extreme. People have always had meetings to arrange meetings, but the lack of focus, the lack of point, the sense that they are operating within accepted levels of incoherence—this all sounds, actually, peculiar.

And when you apply this to the ObamaCare debacle, suddenly it seems to make sense. The White House is so unformed and chaotic that they probably didn’t ignore the problem, they probably held a million meetings on it. People probably said things like, “We’re experiencing some technological challenges but we’re sure we’ll be up by October,” and other people said, “Yes, it’s important we launch strong,” and others said, “The Republicans will have a field day if we’re not.” And then everyone went to their next meeting. And no one did anything. And the president went off and made speeches.

***

But within months, it may well be that abstract arguments over the nature of Obamacare will be trumped by the realities of the Affordable Care Act. Eventually, there will be stats and facts to consider: how many people receive insurance through the exchanges, what happens with premiums, the direction of health care costs, customer satisfaction, and the like. Though the results may be open to debate for a while, it is distinctly possible that one side or the other will be proven right (or wrong). If the website functions, millions sign up, and the health care market doesn’t crash, and premiums don’t zoom up—and this will be on top of the already existing benefits of Obamacare, including removing preexisting conditions restraints, allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ policies, reducing out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for seniors, and forcing insurance companies to devote a higher percentage of premiums to health care coverage—where will the Republicans be? Not only will they be failed doomsayers; they will have lost the No. 1 item on their why-you-should-vote-GOP list. Their anti-government crusade will be derailed. They will be a train without a motor.

Should Obamacare not work, then Obama’s vision—which reflects the progressive tradition of the past century—will be a flat tire. He will no longer be able to advance the cause of government activism. Expand Head Start? Create an infrastructure bank? Why should government be allowed (or trusted) to increase its reach? He can talk about helping the middle class. But how? The failed rollout of the website was a problem in so many ways but especially because it suggested that government cannot perform competently. A more extensive failure with Obamacare would suggest that government cannot be used in the manner Obama wishes to see it utilized.

As I have said before, the Obama administration is likely in the midst of a four month project to properly fix and test this system. It will likely be at least late January or early February before not just HealthCare.gov but the other key information systems supporting the new law are built and repaired to just minimal standards…

My definition of a fixed HealthCare.gov is a site that encourages enrollment rather than discourages it. Time will tell––but only about three weeks time before the December 23 enrollment deadline for having coverage on January 1.

Maybe, however haltingly, we are finally getting to the main event. The day when people can get a good idea for themselves just what value Obamacare presents for them. The premiums, the deductibles and co-pays, as well as the provider networks. Not just the people who are now uninsured or have had their policy canceled, but also those who don’t need Obamacare today but think they might someday. All of them voters focused on finding out for themselves what this Obamacare thing really is.

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Note how the word, “subsidy,” is used like “a new bike under the Holiday Tree” or “your new PONYYYYY…”

They don’t define “subsidy” BECAUSE TO DO SO IS TO EXPLAIN THE BLATANT REDISTRIBUTIVE PLAN CALLED “Obamacare.”

Lourdes on December 3, 2013 at 11:58 PM

Lourdes on December 3, 2013 at 11:55 PM

At this point, I can see the sheeple saying, “Who Cares”…

They want what ‘you’ got and they gonna get it by hook or by crook, cuz hey after all it IS Obama’s stash right?!!!!

* spit *

Scrumpy on December 3, 2013 at 11:59 PM

Yes, it’s already happening…

I heard an Obamacare-propagandaist-Obama-promoter earlier today on TV ACKNOWLEDGING that “Obama lies” (“yes, Obama lies, but…”) and then he went on to say that they’re lies by Obama (it’s Obama lying) so, OK, they’re his lies so they’re OK, “gotta’ be for our good” or some such insanity, amorality.

Jumping over the cliff along with Obama because, well, it’s Obama, jump, don’t think about it, just do it.

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s administration has found a short-term fix to pay insurance companies for plans selected on HealthCare.gov, the not-yet-complete government website used to shop for insurance required under Obama’s healthcare program.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not yet finished building the part of the website that would transfer billions of dollars in subsidies for plan premiums and cost-sharing payments to insurance companies.

It is part of a long technical to-do list that has so far focused on fixing the errors and lag times in the part of the website used by consumers.

Schadenfreude on December 3, 2013 at 11:03 PM

Health plans will estimate how much they are owed, and submit that estimate to the government. Once the system is built, the government and insurers can reconcile the payments made with the plan data to “true up” payments

So the government gives the insurers whatever they ask for and then tries to get it back later? Yeah, that will work.

the security issues show a profound incompetence. Security technology is well within the government’s capacity…SSA, Medicare, IRS all have highly secure interfaces for sensitive transactions.

barry has a general hatred of business..and no doubt health insurers are high on his list…making money off of sick and dying people, etc.
and i’m sure that his ‘teams’ view is similar…so i can see them putting low priority on the back end. Worse case? Blame insurance companies when people can’t get payments…or buy the insurance industry. After all, he’s not opposed at this stage to a public-private partnership in healthcare or insurance.

and soon enough it will be like freddie and fannie, in a conservatorship following the dictates of, well, barry

Commenting on the recent execution after court-martial of a number of counter-revolutionary terrorists, Robeson declared roundly: “From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!

“It is the government’s duty to put down any opposition to this really free society with a firm hand,” he continued, “and I hope they will always do it, for I already regard myself at home here. This is home to me. I feel more kinship to the Russian people under their new society than I ever felt anywhere else. It is obvious that there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government.”

A fellow very friendly to the administration, a longtime supporter, cornered me at a holiday party recently to ask, with true perplexity: “How could any president put his entire reputation on the line with a program and not be on the phone every day pushing people and making sure it will work? Do you know of any president who wouldn’t do that?”

Commentators like to decry low-information voters—the stupid are picking our leaders. I think the real problem is low-information leaders. They have so little experience of life and have so much faith in magic—in media, in words—that they don’t understand people will get angry at you when you mislead them, and never see you the same way again.

she has unkind words for barry’s entire staff…so don’t worry…there is no glimmer of hope.

we’re stuck. Barry is going wild, he will fix it. There is a promo on Ben Nelson tomorrow FIX IT!

as the view said today…you f**ker, you incompetent, bumbling, arrogant p.o.s. f**cker, you F**ked it up royally…and trash thak the rinos

And another friend lost her insurance today. Effective immediately. She’s in real estate. I wanted to ask how they got around the 90 day notice, but I was having too much fun reading everyone trashing Obama and her 1 Obama loving friend (who thinks the law is great b/c she hasn’t lost her insurance).

And another friend lost her insurance today. Effective immediately. She’s in real estate. I wanted to ask how they got around the 90 day notice, but I was having too much fun reading everyone trashing Obama and her 1 Obama loving friend (who thinks the law is great b/c she hasn’t lost her insurance).

txhsmom on December 4, 2013 at 3:29 AM

All of these cancelled plans are substandard & crappy – the Preezy is only doing everyone a favor by forcing them onto better ones that cost a lot more!

We are all together alone
And these are just wishes
And I am just dreamin’
If I ever grow up I will take care of the old
And all the babies that have no one
You might think I give myself too much credit
But I am just dreaming
‘Cause not much is sacred
There’s not really much to do here anymore
I don’t feel like you said
I walk the earth my darling, but I never feel at home

And we all say
I will change tomorrow
(This could be a perfect place)
I will change
(This could be a perfect place)
I will change tomorrow
(This could be a perfect place)
I will change it all tomorrow

I will assure all of the husbands who are guilty
And the wives who feel useless
And I will nurse all of the black and blue babies
With their unhappy parents who had unhappy parents
And I will assure all of the boys who feel awkward
And the girls who feel clumsy
And I will walk alongside the old man
Who feels so alone as everyone rushes by him, now baby

While the always-eloquent Michelle Antoinette Obama might deny it publicly, there’s clear evidence that Barack Obama is indeed homosexual…and is specifically what’s known in the black street slang as “being on the Down Low” or “being a cake boy”. The Obamas’ marriage is an elaborate sham concocted for their mutual benefit, where Michelle serves as Barack’s beard and in return she gets to enjoy a life of fabulous wealth and power she could only dream of growing up in Chicago and depending on Jesse Jackson for jobs and other favors.

ummm, they elected those idiots to take care of them, i don’t have a lot of sympathy

cmsinaz on December 4, 2013 at 6:11 AM

Economic idiots, who don’t understand what “bankruptcy” and “limited funds” mean…is “fiscally conservative” Shmoe himself on the “We need to pay their pensions, even though there’s no money for it!” bandwagon?

the dems are so excited that obama is out fighting on obamacare, they want more…they think with the website now working, all will be well for them
-politico on morning joe

delusional….they really are sticking their heads in the sand with this boondoggle…

cmsinaz on December 4, 2013 at 6:35 AM

It’s like the captain on the Titanic saying, “But, do any of the engines still run? Why don’t we put this thing in reverse, and ram the iceberg again – maybe that’ll plug the hole!”

Interesting Facts: David Byrne, the primary creative force behind The Talking Heads, came out as an affirmed political “Libertarian” a few years ago – publicly supporting Ron Paul and Rand Paul….which got him an attic-dump of abuse from The Media for a while

Same thing happened to Mo Tucker – the drummer for The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed’s old group, when she told a reporter that she was a political “Libertarian”……Media abuse and political harassment followed….

I support both of these folks and their musical endeavors/groups – it’s refreshing to see artists that fly in the face of the Liberal Media narrative…

The administration has given up on success, as it might once have defined it. The object is no longer 7 million people signed up through the exchanges, with 2.7 million of them young and healthy, and the health-care cost curve bending back toward the earth. It is to keep the program alive until 2015.

Keep moving the goal posts, guys, all the way to your own 10-yard line. “Look at us–we can even kick a field goal from our own end zone!” Don’t worry about that guy on the other team running the ball the other way!